Mr. Speaker, yesterday, in response to a question I put to him about the Long Point first nation school in Winneway, Témiscamingue, the Minister of Indian Affairs flippantly answered that he was not familiar with the case.

For two years now, his officials have been telling Chief Mathias and the band council that the minister is well aware of the case, that he is looking into it and that he is very sensitive to the needs of the children in Winneway. Dozens of pages of correspondence have been sent to the minister's office in the past few years. This was all for naught, since the Minister of Indian Affairs is clearly a minister in name only, who is totally insensitive to the hardship and needs of aboriginal peoples.

On behalf of my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois and our future colleague Sylvain Sauvageau, I demand that the minister take his responsibilities and immediately provide sufficient funding to the Amo Ososwan school, in Winneway, Témiscamingue.

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Friendship Group of Parliamentarians for UNESCO, I would like to point out that tomorrow and the day after, Ottawa will be hosting an international conference of parliamentarians on strengthening relations between UNESCO and the parliaments of the world.

In addition to its primary mission, which is to promote education, science and culture, UNESCO has been given several broad mandates, such as the promotion of a culture of peace, dialogue of cultures and civilizations, and protection of cultural diversity. In a word, UNESCO has taken on the duty of humanizing globalization, which constitutes an essential reference point.

There is considerable overlap between what parliamentarians and UNESCO do.

The Ottawa conference is sponsored by UNESCO and the Department of Foreign Affairs. It will lay the foundation for an international network of parliamentarians for UNESCO which, in conjunction with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, will help parliamentarians familiarize themselves with UNESCO and contribute to its policy direction and programs.

Mr. Speaker, the NDP is pleased to join with all the other parties in the House of Commons in recognizing and celebrating the work of Chabad Lubavitch. This worldwide movement provides a network of educational and social service institutions, operates schools, youth centres, social agencies, summer camps, soup kitchens, medical clinics and non-sectarian drug rehabilitation centres. There are 72 Chabad centres in Canada.

At this time we also pay tribute to the leadership of Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, who passed away in 1994. He assumed the leadership of Chabad in 1950 and guided the movement into the international service that we recognize today and from which so many people benefit.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I recognize several outstanding young people in my constituency of Erie-Lincoln.

Millennium scholarships were awarded to four local high school students who excelled in their studies and show great potential for our Canadian community.

I ask all members to please join me in congratulating Elissa Smith and Emily Wilson, both of Port Colborne High School; and Rebecca Bogar and Adam Sherk, both of Ridgeway Crystal Beach High School, for outstanding academic achievement and excellence.

Ashley Browne, from Ridgeway Crystal Beach High School, also deserves special recognition for being selected to participate in a trade mission to Mexico with junior team Canada. Ashley will be the first young person from Niagara to join a junior team Canada delegation, and she plans to promote the growing Niagara wine industry during her trip.

I congratulate these young people, their families, friends and schools. I wish them all good luck. They make us very proud.

Mr. Speaker, the mad cow crisis in western Canada is changing from mad cows to mad cowboys. The Liberals seem content to stand by and watch a vibrant industry grind to a halt.

That need not have happened if the Minister of Agriculture had only sent a strong signal of support for the beef industry.

Instead, the minister is using this crisis to push his own agenda. He is blackmailing the provinces to sign on to his third failed initiative, that much touted agricultural policy framework. Everybody in the west realizes that the APF can never work as a crisis management tool. It will not happen.

Folks in my part of Canada are always wary of Liberal posturing because we have worked through crises before on our own. The outbreak of CWD in our elk herd has been under control for more than two years now and still export borders are closed to our elk ranchers.

Where are the Minister for International Trade and the Minister of Agriculture when we really need them?

It is high time for the Liberal government to lead, follow or get the heck out of the way as the provinces step up and go to bat for the beef industry on their own.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear now that SARS has ravaged Toronto's economy. Ontario's health care system has spent literally millions of dollars fighting the SARS outbreak and yet the Prime Minister continues to say that it is not a disaster. He has actually reneged on the disaster funding he had committed to.

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry but I was in consultation with the chairman of the transport committee on an urgent and pressing matter.

I am sorry there is levity on the other side of the House but there is no levity when it comes to the government in dealing with SARS. This is a very serious issue. Ministers have been seized with the issue. The Minister of Industry has been working on an economic package. The Minister of Human Resources Development has been working on matters dealing with the impact on workers. As a result, the government is certainly seized of the issue.

Mr. Speaker, we can see how seized they are, they cannot even listen to the question.

For weeks the government has avoided dealing with the ban on Canadian beef saying that it has to wait for the science. Well, the science is now done and yet the health minister and the public works minister have both said that the border remains closed “for other reasons”.

Is the real reason the border remains closed that the Prime Minister refuses to call President Bush, or is it that he knows President Bush will not take his phone call?

Mr. Speaker, we still do not know “no” to which question. I suspect it is the latter and that he will not accept the call.

The transport minister blames the government's inability to address important issues, such as SARS, mad cow disease and softwood lumber, on the fact that his government is now in transition. The treasury board minister said that governing has become more difficult and will likely only get worse.

The Prime Minister's own cabinet now seems to understand what the Prime Minister does not, that he is the problem and not part of the solution. Canadians deserve much better.

Will the Prime Minister now step down, or are Canadians doomed to spending another summer watching his party trying to get rid of him?

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the hon. member has been so far back behind the curtains over there that he has not seen what this government has done in the last six months, with an outstanding budget and an active legislative agenda, led by the Prime Minister and culminating in the passage of Bill C-42. We are 100% behind the Prime Minister and the legislative program of this party and this government.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the agriculture minister denied that he was blackmailing the provinces into signing the agriculture policy framework. Today he confirmed that unless the provinces sign on there will be no compensation for the beef industry. In my books, that is blackmail and it is shameful.

Why will the agriculture minister not provide a compensation package outside of the APF?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who just asked the question was very vocal about the previous disaster program that we had and said that it needed to be replaced with something better. That is what we have done, at the wish of not only the opposition but lots of people in the industry. That program is there.

As the hon. member said, the previous program was no good and we wanted to replace it with something better. The third party review has said that what is there to replace it is much better than what was there in the past. I am sure that when the industry understands that fully it will be signing and it will be asking respective ministers to sign it, as some ministers already have and more will be tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, auction markets across Canada remain closed. Neither feedlot operators nor cow-calf ranchers are able to move their animals to export. A staged opening of the U.S. border to young animals is the most likely scenario. That will mean older, grass fed cows will not be able to be sold unless they go into the domestic market.

What is the government doing to work with the beef industry to ensure there is a domestic market for these culled cows that cannot be exported?

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows full well, being a beef producer himself, the domestic market is only so large. The best approach, but not our only approach, is to get the market open so we can ship not only the younger beef but also the older animals to those markets where they have been slaughtered and processed in the past.

In the meantime, we also fully understand the pressure, both financial and otherwise, on the beef industry in Canada and we will be working with the provinces and the industry to alleviate that.